ubiwar . conflict in n dimensions

Jonathan Heawood, As free as they decide we can be, The Guardian’s Comment is Free, 25 November 2008:

It’s not as though we need the absolute right afforded by the First Amendment in order to achieve greater freedom of speech for the world’s online population. We merely need to secure the rights we already enjoy under international law. This may require the creation of a new body, and an amendment to Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to spell out our right to use the internet, and to expect that use to be as free as it appears to be. This in turn will mean requiring the corporations which own the internet to explain their actions when they censor us and snoop on our communications.

Without greater transparency and accountability on the part of the owners of the internet, we are sleepwalking into a new era of censorship that the existing human rights framework can do nothing to address.

I had planned to be at the conference which framed Heawood’s article but couldn’t make it. If this was one of its conclusions then it sounds like a worthwhile exercise.